Natalia Korczakowska Directs CNP’s WITKACY | Two-Headed Calf

the CalArts Center for New Performance (CNP) and the Warsaw, Poland-based Teatr Studio present WITKACY | Two Headed Calf this week. | Image courtesy of CNP.

In a continued collaboration, the CalArts Center for New Performance (CNP) and the Warsaw, Poland-based Teatr Studio present WITKACY | Two-Headed Calf this week. Natalia Korczakowska, artistic director of Teatr Studio, explores the work of Stanisław Witkiewicz (better known by his pseudonym “Witkacy”) in the production.

Witkacy (1885-1939) was a Polish poet, writer, painter, photographer and philosopher. An enduring symbol of the Polish avant-garde, his best-known dramas include Tumor Mózgowicz, translated into English as Tumor Brainiowicz (1920); Wariat i zakonnica / The Madman and the Nun (1923); Szalona lokomotywa / The Crazy Locomotive (1923); and Metafizykja dwugłowego cielęcia / Metaphysics of a Two-Headed Calf (1921).

In WITKACY / Two-Headed Calf, a joint company of Polish and CalArts artists explore Witkacy’s original work. The playwright believed nature could be a source of metaphysical experience that helps protect our individuality often lost in Western culture. Set against the endless and wild California nature, the plot unfolds through the journey of a neurotic boy and his family, from New Guinea through Sydney to the desert. The work is an exploration of both external and internal journeys.

Korczakowska, CNP artist in residence in the fall of 2017, worked with CNP artists this past summer in Warsaw for a month-long interdisciplinary collaboration with Teatr Studio, one of Poland’s premier experimental theaters. The developmental residency culminated in CalArts Studio Festival at the theater’s stages and at Plac Defilad, a public square in downtown Warsaw. She returned to CalArts with a team of Teatr Studio artists last month for further development of WITKACY | Two Headed Calf.

The performance runs for four shows Nov. 29-Dec. 1 at CalArts’ Walt Disney Modular Theater.

Related: CalArts Center for New Performance to Host Residency and Festival in Poland

—Brigitte Ugarte